A very real unintentional consequence of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is emerging and will constitute a crisis in education that may destroy teachers unions in the very near future.
As NCLB coerces all schools to pander to "teaching for tests", more and more teachers are being hired not because they are good teachers but because they are great test drill instructors. These drill instructors are gaining tenure.
As the test paradigm festers in one generation of graduates after another, it is individuality, creativity, humanity, education, and America's competitiveness that is being left behind and brutally sacrificed. The perverse consequence of the NCLB education policies is not only destroying our youth but infiltrating our education system with poor teachers whom the system will be unable to flush. In other words, if NCLB fails there may be no systematic way for public schooling to correct the mistake. Schools will be stuck for generations with one-dimensional, parrot trainers who will remain on the public payroll when the public can no longer afford the mediocrity.
Of course, society could always choose to scrap the entire public school system.
Maybe it's not such a bad idea anyway.
Teacher's unions have helped enable NCLB to take hold with little more than a whimper of protest despite decades of educational models that suggest NCLB is misguided and harmful. They will have no one to blame but themselves as the chickens come home to roost (assuming they can find their way home).
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